Kellyanne Conway Tries To Spin Trump’s ‘Lie’ About Lester Holt As Trump Simply Not Knowing The Truth

Kellyanne Conway’s whole job involves twisting the public’s perception of Donald Trump’s statements. She seems game to do so, and on Monday morning, Conway confronted a question from the Morning Joe crew about Trump’s capacity to tell the truth. This is an ongoing dilemma, for not only does Trump switch stances on big issues (and gleefully crows about making people guess what he really means), the guy consistently cannot deal with the most easily proven facts. There’s a reason why Politifact’s Trump rating heavily weighs his statements between “mostly false” and “pants on fire.”

The particular fact in question revolves around Monday night’s presidential debate. The event will be moderated by NBC’s Lester Holt, and Trump recently grumbled to Bill O’Reilly about Holt being a Democrat. Trump used this as evidence that all the debates are stacked against him, unlike the recent and disastrous town hall moderated by Matt Lauer, who Trump couldn’t stop raving about to O’Reilly. The main problem with Trump’s rambling here is that Lester Holt is a registered Republican.

Conway’s Morning Joe visit didn’t go well. When confronted by Bloomberg Politics’ Mark Halperin about Trump’s factually inaccurate statement, Conway insisted that there’s no way that Trump didn’t lie about Holt because he didn’t know the truth. She called this a terrible statement to scrutinize, which she says proves her campaign’s fear that Trump won’t be treated fairly after the debates. Mika Brzezinski asked Conway to stop avoiding the question (“We’re asking why he lied about Lester Holt”) to which Conway answered, “He didn’t lie.” Brzezinski shot back, “Um, I think he did.” And Conway tried again: “Mika, a lie would mean that he knew the man’s party registration.”

Halperin wondered, “So, as president, would he say things that are false without knowing the truth?” Conway just smiled and asked people to look at all the Twitter criticism from “objective reporters” for all the examples of “slander” against Donald Trump. Conway’s said similar things before about how questions about Trump’s missing tax returns are “not journalism.” Watch the entire Morning Joe segment below.

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